With the Cincinnati Reds landing a new broadcasting deal for fans to watch games in 2025, Mark Sheldon of Reds.com broke down some of what that means. One big question, though, was will the new deal impact what the club spends on payroll given that it seems incredibly unlikely that Cincinnati will be able to match the roughly $60,000,000 a season they were getting from Bally Sports Ohio for their broadcasts.
Sheldon asked the question to Reds COO and CFO Doug Healy. “we will maintain payroll levels at or above 2024,” he said. That was followed up by a bit of funny statement, saying “We will continue to give Nick Krall, Terry Francona, and the entire Reds baseball operations the resources they need to field a championship caliber team at the major league level.”
It’s been a long time since the Reds seemed to provide a championship caliber team. But that aside, we can dig into the payroll statement a bit. At the 2024 level would mean that if Nick Martinez accepts the 1-year, $21,050,000 qualifying offer that the team made that they would be at the same level and have nothing left over to add to the team. While it would be a good move to get Martinez back, not adding anything else would be less than ideal.
If Martinez were to turn down the deal and sign elsewhere, then that would leave Cincinnati with a little bit of money to spend to match 2024’s payroll, but it still doesn’t feel like it would be nearly enough to find the kinds of improvements the club would realistically need to be a contending “championship caliber team” on paper heading into spring training.
Just how much the Reds are willing to go beyond “2024 levels” feels like it’s not much. If it were, then Healy likely would have said they were going to spend more and not hedged things with “at least 2024 levels”. Perhaps that’s just reading too much into it, though.
Of course, Cincinnati’s front office doesn’t have to add via free agency, where salaries tend to be higher. They could also attempt to acquire quality players in trade who aren’t yet making higher salaries and stretch the dollars that they do have at their disposal. That would likely require trading away from valued prospects and maybe some big league infielders where there still appear to be too many guys for not enough positions if everyone remains healthy.
Creativity could matter. Luck would help, too. As noted earlier in the week – the Steamer Projections and Fangraphs depth charts for playing time don’t exactly see Cincinnati as being all that good in 2025 as the roster sits right now. They’re going to need help.
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